TM ELEY | yt Ca TTT UC UTA | Pa UL) SeELTE SEAS Library ELTE SEAS Library ____DATE DUE BOW OKLZ — poi, ‘ al 200 nov 11°” ogy OKT 25, | 2H JAN20 203 Noy 0 01 20vi APRA 2011 APR 21 201 Mas oa Ben wh S26 rt 011 JON TR poi son 24 sown.sen Om 202 MAL abe ADAM NADASDY BACKGROUND TO ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION (PHONETICS, PHONOLOGY, SPELLING) {or students of En sat Hungarian teacher walang inetitionsFoletoktatas! ankonyy ‘A Konyy az Oktatisi Minisztérum tamogatésaval, a Felsdokiatésl Palyazatok lrodja tal lebonyoltott FelsGoktatas! TankOnyy- és. SzakkOnyvtamogalass Payazat koretebonjolant meg, ira: 'SZENTGYORGYI SZILARD egyetem docens VARGA LASZLO ogyetomtandr (© Nadasdy Adam, Nomzet Tankonyvkiadb Rt, Budapest, 2006 ISBN 963 19.5791 8 Minden jog fenntarva, A ma egészének vagy barmely részének mechankus, Hee elektonikus masoldsa, sokszorositésa, valamint informéciészolglats rendszeren vaio térolsa' és tovabblasa a Kiado olzetos iasbell, “ongedtyohoz Kot PREFACE, ‘his hoki rman need fr B.A studs io Hangin highs ducatn, ining 0 ect acer gl scades mh they “Leth a lng tn Sard niversty textbook woul: and ch more ral mri hgh oe ig forthe fate chr The rnmen sls higly save concrete ifs of again lees ad exposes thse in ret tilt fen gues hing tat we ot impor fo a Hngaian pot of view Thus te ook snot fh a used dectiption of Enpsh ronaciaion as such, bts pail texthok for Hing each tins, siving linge argument only as kak yround when ness does it coin Imhof te phonological argumentation a atria nies eve The ce fs covered are phonetics. phono, sling (or "ete--eund lee sel tht hese conibt tow egy wa pos pronto, a to al yo tows echng. a tthe ar gen oe weight. Tis mea tht hess ‘epson ponte proper than radon (es del of aulin a of mth Welmine a freipn accep, while more han sal spent ones (Le ooo) ad ‘pth othe ht he Ginsos ware ofthe PA nd the phone sedans of Engl ttt cna facet without ica — ec thou ths now bee yd by phonological thinking Ar ths book, bower, i ean A-level ato of Egish hosts or Phonology i ts the Ginsonion anseritin for pth fH wae the sh lnguge tc nde Rascal an apology of is tancron sate, Whe he presen stor hs his reservations abot Cine snalsis and gency shot pring tetas hat apologetic rater thn ie) i hs Seamed a or pt ees ch ah tnproach wuld be the mos robles indeed anspor othe somes and inpranc of saying the Sous of guage. Im warmest ope ht eres eles wil oan ome serous (an more ype) mils a ez he Hato of he rest hook a th essay dss ellowing om hey, hae fourteen capers of whish cw (an 10) are append reference ats the ter tel aye ered & pone sas ofa anes fctre cone: The weve capers my beset weekso-wec, or ead ysis one Beth etre the cd tem examination. The “Queso for Rein” th end ofeach chips seen ‘tpn quot an a ned oer the neater th cope, ' led Biography cant oun! the Reining th ones we bap tht by aig nthe ron war lo ere aly The bok is based on Bric pronation (RP), The ae erences to American lish wrt sesed cesta dete eat of hat ay of gh woud hve made the book to bly. T woud ke wo exes my thnks 9 all ubo helped, dist o dist nthe sharing of this book: my panes ear be ne iss And ait Zotz, ha ‘oily ake et ete ths ok Pr Srget forbs vale etc, Jas ons without whose pate encour! he wrk wal ot be cn ino execs dae, Oeoder 2008 ‘ies NadyCONTENTS ‘The sounds of English Other symbols and signs Abbreviations Bibliography: further reading and useful books PART I - GENERAL PROBLEMS Chapter 1 The Components of Pronunciation ‘The Phonetic Component Production ~ Perception The nonphonetic component Lexical knowledge in pronunciation ~ Knowledge of rules — Rules for suprasegmentals, ‘The relationship of phonetics and pronunciation Morpheme identity vs. morpheme alternation — Teaching phonetic and nonphonetic knowledge Questions for revision 22 25 Chapter 2 Sound, Allophone, Phoneme Distribution : Sound and phoneme Minimal pairs — Subphone distribution — Free variation Phonetics and phonology Phonetic classification and phonemic system ~ The variety described: RP Phonology, the native speaker and the language learner Questions for revision c differences — Allophones: complementary 31 Chapter 3 Spelling and Transcription Problems of alphabetic spelling ....m#msnnennnntnninnininnnnenennnsnnnee 37 ‘The phonemic principle in spelling - Phonetic spelling ‘The functions of transcription A2 The representing function — The disambiguating function ~The analysing function — The contrasting function Practical problems and advice on transcription 49 Questions for revision 52 PART Il - THE SOUND SEGMENTS OF ENGLISH Chapter 4 Obstruent Consonants Classification of consonants Manner of Articulation — Place of Articulation Obstruent consonants: Voiceless and voiced— Vv Assimilations ore Yoice-assimilation ~ The suffixes -s and -ed Patatalization Lexical palatalization — Occasional palatalization Obstruents requiring special comment ‘The dentals: /O 6/ ~ The alveolar stops; /t d/— The distribution of /h/ Pronunelation of the letter s: voiceless or voiced? Pronunciation of the letter x *ronunelation of the letters ¢ and g: soft or hard? *ronunciation of the digraphs ch and gh Questions for revision Chapter § Sonorant Consonants De-voicing of sonorants ‘The phoneme /I/: Clear-L and Dark-L ~ The consonant /1 jyllabie consonants: ilidew M- Questions for revision Shapter 6 The English Consonants One By One (Cheoklist) ‘haptor 7 Vowels I: Articulatory Cla Manner of articulation of vowels ‘ace of articulation of vowels thort vowels MW, Jeo! — /el, feel — Ini, bol Long vowels Mid, hui! = 19:1 = fo: - diphthongs ‘The wide diphthongs: /o1 at aw/ ~The narrow closing /e1 ov/ — The centring diphthongs: /a ua ea/ Veak vowels. Schwa /a/ Questions for revision. ification ‘hapter 8 Vowels I: Functional Classification jense and lax vowels ‘Trisyllabic laxing ~ Laxing endings hho behaviour of vowels before 4 Pro-R Breaking ~ Pre-R Broadening ~ Broadness without r fowel Shift : fowels in word-final position ‘owels before another vowelThe vowels of weak syllables 143 Summary of the functional classes of vowels 147 Questions for revision 147 Chapter 9 Letter-To-Sound Rules For Vowels Letter, grapheme, digraph 149 ‘The standard sound-values of the vowel-graphemes 150 ‘The regular pronunciations of the single vowel-letters 153 Graphic positions of single vowel-letters The tense/lax choice rules... 5S Covered position rule — Free position basic rule - Nonlaxable vowels — Free position laxing rules ~ CiV Tensing - Overview Orthographic final consonant doubling sen 166 The vowel graphemes one by ONC erensnmnennitnmnntinninnnninnntiennneenee 167 Pronunciation of the single vowel-letters — Pronunciation of the vowel- digraphs Questions for reViSION —sernsnnnnstinnnitennntnnnnineninneiieneienes wlT4 Chapter 10 The English Vowels One By One (Checklist) : 176 PART I - SUPRASEGMENTALS Chapter 11 Stress in Base Words Basic notions of syllables and stress 185 Secondary-stress placement 191 Stress Clash Avoidance ~ The Early Stress Requirement ~ Derivational secondary stress — lambic secondary stress Primary-stress placement The stressing of nouns The stressing of verbs Noun/verb homographs The stressing of adjectives Summary of the stressing of base words Questions for revision Chapter 12. Stress in Prefixes, Suffixes and Compounds Basic moprhological notions The stressing of prefixes. nu The stressing of suffixes in Neutral suffixes ~ Self-stressed suffixes ~ Stress-fixing suffixes ~ Weak suffixes — Greek-type compounds ~ Syllable loss before suffixes — Summary The stressing of compounds Initially-stressed compounds — Finally-stressed compounds ~ Additional remarks on compounds - Summary Questions for revision oe 32\eapter io otress In Tonnected speech Features of connected speech The tone-unit Rhythm — Rhythmic stress-shift - Weak forms of function words Neutral tonic placement The Last Content-Word Rule— Neutral tonic on an earlier content-word — Neutral tonic on a function-word — Summary Dislocated tonic placement Dislocated tonic for constrast — Dislocated tonic for highlighting new information — Summary Summary of stress in connected speech Questions for revision 245 Chapter 14 Intonation The form of intonation .276 282 The tones and their meanings The falling tone — The fall-rise tone — The low rising tone — The high rising tone Sentence types and their intonation Non-questions — Questions Tone unit division Questions for revision INDEXTHE SOUNDS OF ENGLISH Textbooks describing British English (“RP” variety), and using the IPA transcription system, usually list the following sounds. VOWELS CONSONANTS ‘Short Vowels Obstruents 1 kit Stops © ten Popig 2 bag b bed A cup t tie > lot d do 3 put k cat eg Long Vowels i seem Afjricates u: moon, cube u chip > call, lord, store & jam a: dance, park 3: first Fricatives fill Diphthongs yo vain el name © think ar five & they 31 join s sit oot home z 200 au town i ship 13 beer )3 vision 3 care ho hit va poor, cure i Sonorants Weak Vowels Nasals 2 ago, letter m meet « i happy, creation ** nto 1 exact, wanted a sing u graduate, united ** Liquids ¥ regular 1 leat 1 t red Gilides i yes wo win | * ows! can also be transcribed as /aty. r ‘** Some publications ignore weak /i w/ and use /1 v/ instead.stem, a a food [1 o po. OTHER SYMBOLS AND SIGNS. (raised “h”): aspiration the sound of Hungarian ¢ in gyere the sound of H d in lab the sound of H 0 in fok the sound of H 6 in sé a frictionless r as in RP rain, carol. flap, as in AmE city, or H szamarak R-coloured schwa as in AE bird labio-dental nasal as in comfort glottal stop vowel with primary stress vowel with secondary stress (Glanted brackets): phonemes (square brackets): sounds nothing, no sound et “pov.at/ (dot between sounds or letters): syllable boundary (vertical line under sound): syllabic consonant (small circle under sound): de-voiced sound (tilde above vowel): nasalized vowel (asterisk before a word or sound): incorrect or nonexistent form this form is used by some people, but there exists another pronunciation cross-hatch boundary (morpheme boundary between a word and a neutral suffix) plus boundary (morpheme boundary between a stem or word and a nonneutral suffix) rmorpheme division alternants (both forms exist) falling intonation falling-rising intonation low-tising intonation high-rising intonation10 Vowel-letters with accent marks represent the following sounds: ‘with Jength mark ith shoriness | with circumflex not before r before r mark mark a= fe ar = feal a= fel a(t) = fav! fet fer = hal fel er = isi fan) [ir = faa/ i= i ir = fa: fou! or = (oi 8 = bof or = lod fui,ut Sar = Goer, foal [a = ial tr = fay Note. The letter y (when a vowel) is the same as i. Stress-accent marks above vowel-letters: & primary stress (= /" a/) a secondary stress ABBREVIATIONS aka. also known as AmE = American English (in this book this refers to General American, GA) Bre c of. E eg. ed. etal H ie, PA Pp. hh English (in this book this refers to RP) = any consonant = compare, refer to, see also... (Latin confer) English for example (Latin exempli gratia) edition, editor, edited by ind others, members of a team (Latin et altri) Hungarian that is (Latin id est) International Phonetic Alphabet = page = pages = respectively Received Pronunciation (educated Southem British, also called BBC English) any vowel = namely (Latin videlicet) as opposed to, against (Latin versus)7) " BIBLIOGRAPHY (FURTHER READING AND USEFUL BOOKS) Pronouncing Dictionaries Jones, Daniel (1997) English Pronouncing Dictionary (= EPD], 15th ed. by Peter Roach and James Hartman. Cambridge: CUP. [BrE + AmE] — 14th ed. by A. C. Gimson, Reprinted with Revisions and Supplement by Susan Ramsaran, 1988. [BrE only] Kenyon, J.S. and Knott, T.A. (1953) A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English. Spring- field: Merriam. [AmE only] Nadasdy A. (2000) Huron’s English Pronouncing Dictionary, Budapest: Texofi-Biogréf. [BrE + some AmE] Wells, J.C. (1990) Longman Pronunciation Dictionary [= LPD]. London: Longman. [Br + AmE] General dictionaries using this transcription system {COB] Collins Cobuild English Language dictionary. (1987) Ed. by John Sinclair. London: Collins. [LDCE] Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (1995). 3rd ed, by D. Summers. Harlow: Longman. {OALD] Oxford Advanced Leamer’s Dictionary of Current English (1995). Originally com- piled by A. S. Homby. 5th ed. by J. Crowther. Oxford UP. [OCED} Oxford Coneise English Dictionary (1995). 9th ed. by D. Thompson. Oxford: Clar- endon Press. [OED] Oxford English Dictionary. Volumes 1-20. 2nd ed, by J. Simpson and E. Weiner. (1989) Oxford: Clarendon Press. English phonetics and phonology Cruttenden, A. (2001) Gimson’s Pronunciation of English. (6th ed.) London: Arnold, Gicgerich. H. J, (1992) English phonology: An introduction. Cambridge UP. Kreidler, C.W. (1989) The Pronunciation of English: A Course Book in Phonology. Oxford: Blackwell Kreidler, C. W. (1997) Describing Spoken English. Oxford: Blackwell. McMahon, April M. S. 2001) An Introduction to English Phonology. Oxford UP. Roach, P. (1991) English Phonetics and Phonology: a practical course. Cambridge UP. Wells, J.C. (1982) Accents of English 1: An Introduction. Cambridge UP. Practical materials Bowler, B. and S. Cunningham (1990) Headway Advanced Pronunciation. Oxford UP. Brazil, D. (1994) Pronunciation for Advanced Learners of English. Cambridge UP. Fletcher, C. (1990) Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, Study Guide. London: Longman, Fletcher, C. and J. D. O'Connor. (1990) Sounds English: a pronunciation practice book. Har- low: Longman Jones, D. (1972) The Pronunciation of English. Cambridge UP. Kovacs J. and Siptar P. (2000) Ujra angolra hangolva: az angol kiejtés k6nyve. Bp: Helikon. Lecumberri, M. L. G. and J. A. Maidment (2000) English Transcription Course. London: Amold a12 Morris-Wilson, I. (1984) English Phonemic Transcription. Oxford: Blackwell. Nadasdy A. (1987) Angol kiejtési gyakorlatok a gimndzium széméra. Bp: Tanknyvkiado, Nadasdy, A. (2002) Practice Book in English Phonetics and Phonology. Bp.: ELTE SEAS. O'Connor, J.D. (1980) Better English Pronunciation. 2nd ed. Cambridge UP. ‘Suprasegmentals (stress, intonation) Brazil, D., Coulthard, M. and Johns, C. (1980) Discourse Intonation and Language Teaching: ‘An Account of Intonation in English, London: Longman. Couper-Kuhlen, E. (1986) An introduction to English prosody. London: Edward Amold. Cruttenden, A. (1986) Intonation, Cambridge UP. Fudge, E. (1984) English Word-stress, London: Allen and Unwin. O'Connor, J.D. and Amold, G.F. (1961, 1973) Intonation of C Handbook. London: Longman, Quitk, R. ef al, (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Appendix Il: Stress, Rhythm, and Intonation (pp. 1588-1608). London: Longman. [Earlier version entitled “A Grammar of Contemporary English”. Varga Laszié (1975) A Contrastive Analysis of English and Hungarian Sentence Prosody. (The Hung.-Eng. Contrastive Linguisties Project, Working Papers 6.) Bp.: MTA, Wong, R. (1987) Teaching pronunciation: Focus on English stress and intonation. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall Hloquial English: A Practical American pronunciation ‘Avery, P. and S. Ehrlich (eds.) (1992) Teaching American English pronunciation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edwards, H. T. (1992) Applied Phonetics: The sounds of American English. San Diego, CA: Singular Publishing Group. Dauer, R. M. (1993) Accurate English: A complete course in pronunciation. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Regents Prentice Hall. Fromkin, V.A. and Rodman R. (1983) An Introduction to Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston Gilbert, J. (1993) Clear speech: Pronunciation and listening comprehension in North Ameri- can English. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kenyon, JS. and Knott, T.A. (1953) A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English. Springfield: Merriam, Prator, C.H. and B.W. Robinett (1985) Manual of American English Pronunciation. 4th ed. New York: Holt. Varieties, accents, dialects Hughes, A. and Trudgill, P. (1979) English Accents and Dialects. London: Edward Arnold, O'Donnell, W. R. and L. Todd, (1991) Variety in contemporary English. 2nd ed. London and New York: Harper Collins Academic, ‘Trudgill, P. and Hannah, J. (1982, 1985) International English: A Guide to Varieties of Standard English. London: Edward Amold. Spelling and pronunciation Carey, E. (1994) A survey of English spelling. London: Routledge. Digby, C. and J. Myers (1993) Making Sense of Spelling and Pronunciation. Hemel Hemp- stead: Prentice Hall. Nadasdy, A. (2002) Practice Book in English Phonetics and Phonology. Bp.: ELTE SEAS. Vene, Wijk, Teach Baker Brow Brow, Celce Hayer Kenw Lane, MacC Gener Carr] Catfor Clark, Daven Duran Gussr Katam Ladefi Lass, I Spenci Tras! Gener, Asher, Bright, Crystal Crystal Crystal Kenese Lyons, MeArtl Richanching actical dix I ersion osody. ewood oxford: 0, CA: ewood : Holt, Ameri- inglish 4th ed. rold, ton and aties of Hemp- AS. 2 Venezky, R.L, (1970) The Structure of English Orthography. The Hague: Mouton, Wijk, A. (1966) Rules of Pronunciation for the English Language. Oxford UP. Teaching pronunciation to foreign students Baker, A. (1982) Introducing English Pronunciation. Cambridge UP. Brown, A. (ed.) (1991) Teaching English pronunciation: a book of readings. London: Rout- ledge. Brown, A. (ed.) (1992) Approaches to pronunciation teaching. London: Modern English Publications in association with the British Council Celce-Murcia, M. ef al, (1996) Teaching Pronunciation. Cambridge UP. Haycrafi, B. (1971) The teaching of pronunciation. London: Longman. Kenworthy, J. (1987) Teaching English pronunciation. London: Longman. Lane, L. (1993) Focus on pronunciation: Principles and practice for effective communication New York: Longman. MacCarthy, P. (1978) The teaching of pronunciation. Cambridge UP. General phonetics and phonology Carr, P. (1993) Phonology. London: Macmillan. Catford, J. C. (1988) A practical introduction to phonetics. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Clark, J. and C. Yallop (1990) An introduction to phonetics and phonology. Oxford: Black- well Davenport, M. and S. J. Hannahs (1998) Introducing Phonetics and Phonology. London: Edwasd Arnold. Durand, J. and Siptir, P. (1997) Bevezetés a fonolégidba. Budapest: Osiris, Gussmann, E. (2002) Phonology: Analysis and theory. Cambridge UP. Katamba, F. (1989) An introduction to phonology. London: Longman. Ladefoged, P. (1992) A course in phonetics. 3rd ed. New York: Harcourt Lass, R. (1984) Phonology. Cambridge UP. Spencer, A. (1995) Phonology: Theory and description. Oxford: Blackwell. ‘Trask, L. (1996) A Dictionary of Phonetics and Phonology. London: Routledge General works on language, linguistics, and English Asher, R. E. and J. Y. M. Simpson (eds.) (1993) Encyclopedia of language and linguistics. 10 vols. Oxford: Pergamon Press Bright, W. (ed.) (1992) International Encyclopedia of Linguistics. 4 vols. New York: Oxford University Press. [Phonetics editor: P. Ladefoged; phonology editor: J. J. McCarthy.] Crystal, D. (1987) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge UP. ~ Hungarian translation: A nyely enciklopédigja (1998). Budapest: Osiris. Crystal, D. (1991) A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Crystal, D. (ed.) (1995) The Cambridge Eneyelopedia of the English Language. Cambr. UP. Kenesei Istvan (szerk.) (2000) A nyelv és a nyelvek. 4th ed. Bp.: Corvina. Lyons, J. (1981) Language and Linguistics. Cambridge: CUP. McArthur, T. (ed.) (1992) The Oxford companion to the English language. Oxford UP, Richards, J. C., J. Platt and H. Platt (eds.) (1992) Longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics. 2nd ed. London: Longman,PART I — GENERAL PROBLEMS CHAPTER 1 THE COMPONENTS OF PRONUNCIATION 1 What does a person have to know in order to pronounce English correctly? What are the components of a good pronunciation? To answer this question, we might take an imagin- ary ideal learner (or even a native speaker of English) and examine his performance, deserib- ing all that he knows. But the opposite approach is also possible: let us imagine learners of English who commit all conceivable types of pronunciation mistakes, and let us ask in each case: what element of knowledge would be necessary to avoid that mistake? This approach will provide us with more diagnostic insight into the various components of pronunciation, because by isolating and classifying pronunciation mistakes, we can also isolate and classify the components of knowledge that are necessary t¢ avoid them Many people think that “pronunciation” and “phonetics” are the same thing, the name “phonetics” being just a more elegant word to describe pronunciation. This is not so; the main aim of this chapter is to show that not all pronunciation mistakes are phonetic mistakes, and consequently, not all pronunciation knowledge is phonetic knowledge. THE PHONETIC COMPONENT Production 1.2 Segmental elements, — Imagine that a Hungarian learner of English pronounces room with an r just like that in H riid; or that he pronounces thief as */sifl; ot that he makes the word so (correctly /sou) sound */s0:/, i.e. exactly like H s26. (The asterisk (*) indicates a nonexistent or incorrect form.) Why does he make these mistakes? The answer is self- evident: because the English sounds //, /@/, or fow/ are unfamiliar to him. They do not exist in Hungarian, so he finds them difficult to articulate. (Note that the transcription symbol /! is quite misleading as it conceals the difference between H rand E r!) Chapte lips are some E a speec fashion mother transfer 13 as */stt Hungar sing co distribu med: culate t become isno sw languag specific las being at those th position knowled F ments. intonatic it and its | simple b words in English» However pardde, 5“hat are rmagin- Jescrib- ners of in each sproach ciation, classify e name ae main wes, and, ounces = makes licates a is self- rot exist ol It! is Chapter 1 ie ‘The problem facing our learner is, in this ease, not an intellectual one, His tongue and lips are required to make movements and take up positions he is not accustomed to. Indeed, some English sounds count as mistakes in Hungarian speech: for example, using /0/ counts as a speech defect (“poe”). He is unable or unwilling to condition his muscles in the necessary fashion, and helps himself out by replacing the unfamiliar sound with one known in his ‘mother tongue. Such a phenomenon is a case of native language transfer because the learner transfers his native habits on to the target language. 13 The situation is somewhat different when somebody pronounces sing (correctly /s1y/) as */sing/. This is not because the sound /y/ in itself is unfamiliar or difficult: it occurs in Hungarian, e.g. leng /leng/, sonka /onko/. So why is it difficult to pronounce words like E sing comectly? Because in Hungarian this sound /y/ never stands at the end of a word (its distribution is different from that of E /n/; see 2.2). Similarly, many learners pronounce matchbox (correctly ryetfboks!) as */meedgboks/, with a voiced /d3/. Again, we may ask: is it dfficuls-for'@ Hungarian to arti- culate the consonant /t{/? Of course not; cf. esip, récs_Jn-Hungarian, however, /f/ must become /d3/ when followed by /by, so that e.g. rdgshai must be pronounced /ra:dgbpn/. There is no such voicing ruld Induagheh where /[b-Fis a permitted sequence. This type of mistake, then, is not due to some absolute difference between the two languages (as in 1.2), but to a relative difference: it is only in particular positions or in specific combinations that the sound is difficult for the learner to articulate 14 Suprasegmental elements. — In the two sections above we saw the necessity of being able to produce (to articulate) the individual sounds of the target language, including those that are unknown in the mother tongue and those that are known but appear in unusual Positions. In phonetic terminology individual sounds are called segments, so this type of knowledge is segmental articulation. Pronunciation, however, includes elements that are (so to speak) “above” the seg- ments. These are called suprasegmentals (from Latin supra ‘above’): they are stress and intonation. LS The place and intensity of stress (H ‘hangstily’) may differ from language to language, and its knowledge is an important component of pronunciation. Hungarian word stress is simple because the stress always falls on the first syllable of a word. There are many such words in English too, e.g. rdpid, military, dttitude, récognizing, héoligan. (In non-transeribed English words the stress will be shown with an accent mark above the vowel-letter, e.g. d, é) However, in English stress may fall on some other syllable too: tomérrow, invéstigated, ardde, Portuguése. The learner has to be able to pronounce a word with stress not on its first6 Chapter + syllable, e.g. to say beginning /bx'ginny/ and not *béginning *"bigmy. (It is surprising how little difficulty Hungarians normally have with this.) Correct stressing not only means knowing where to put the stress, but also where not to put any. This is more difficult for Hungarians. For example, the second half of postman is unstressed and therefore its a is weakened to /a/, i. /poustman/. Learners often ignore this and give some stress to -man, saying */poustmzen/. They also have to learn that some words — called function words, like auxiliaries, prepositions, etc. — are pronounced weak (= completely unstressed) in most cases. For example, in Where does Margaret live? the word does is unstressed, pronounced in its weak form /daz/, despite its grammatical importance: Mea daz ‘margrat 'hiv/, Units larger than the word — such as word groups or sentences — also have their characteristic stress problems. The main stress of a sentence (also called “tonic”) normally falls on the last word (shown by W before the syllable): Her aunt is a nice old MEAdy. In Hungarian this is unusual, as there the main stress of the sentence falls on an earlier word: A nagynénje NHElyes oreg néni- ‘The Hungarian leamer easily transfers this on to the English sentence, producing the incorrect stressing ‘Her aunt is a NNICE old lady. Correct sentence stress, then, is necessary for correct rhythm, and this is also part of pronun- ciation, 1.6 The other important suprasegmental element is intonation (H “hanglejtés’), ic. the melody of a sentence. This is not the same as rhythm, You must be able to produce the characteristic melodies of English, which often differ from those of the miother tongue. For example, the intonation of one type of question in English, called Yes/No Question, is very different from Hungarian question-intonation. Compare: LY A papaja némettanar? Is her dad a German teacher? ‘The last four syllables show a fall-rise-fall in Hungarian, but a steady rise in English. If the Hungarian learner says the English sentence with the Hungarian intonation, an English hearer will not be sure whether it was a question or not, as the melody gives him contrary infor- ‘mation: to him, a sentence whose intonation falls at the end is more likely to be a statement than a question. Chapt Per 1 elem Tangu as we Each heat, thus [ belies vowe (bar for w speak prone make woul: mean asaq the loChapter 1 sing how vhere not stman is more this ne words weak (= the word portance: rave their normally er word: + incorrect of pronun- )y ie. the ‘oduce the ongue, For on, is very lish. If the slish hearer trary infor- 1 statement Chapter 1 v7 Perception 1.7 So far, we have spoken of the knowledge (or the ability) to produce the various sound- elements of the target language. With a general term we call this the correct articulation of the language: segmental articulation and suprasegmental articulation. But this is only one side, the “active” side of pronunciation; there is a “passive” side as well. When we hear English speech, we must be able to recognize, to perceive its elements. Each of the above areas of articulation has its perceptional counterpart. For instance, the word heat, usually transcribed as /hi:t/, has in fact a shortened vowel because of the following /t, thus [hit]. Now, a Hungarian who hears this may be misled by the shortness of the vowel into believing that what he hears is [ht], and think of the word hit. He has wrongly perceived the vowel segment. Or, on hearing the pronounced word /baen/ (=bang), he might think of /baen’ yan), deceived by the absence of a /g/ sound at the end of the word, Besides segmental perception, we must leam to recognize suprasegmental elements for what they are. A low-rising intonation in English expresses a statement about which the speaker is indifferent or careless. The sentence She ,knows pronounced with this low-rising intonation means “She knows, but I don’t really care, it makes no difference to me”. The same sentence pronounced with a high-rising intonation would be a question: She Aknows means “Does she know? Really?” In Hungarian, however, any rising intonation is perceived as a question, and so our learner will mi terpret the low-rising English sentence, thinking of the low-rising Hungarian sentence PTudja which has the value of a question. Thus he has made a mistake in suprasegmental perception. L8 All components of knowledge we have described so far can be called phonetic knowledge (or ability), and the mistakes phonetic mistakes. The science of phonetics deals with the production and perception of the sounds of human speech, both at the segmental and at the suprasegmental level. Phonetics describes and classifies vowels, consonants, syllables, degrees of stress, sentence rhythms and intonation patterns. The ideal leamer should be able to produce and perceive all these. In practice this is, of course, seldom possible (especially in the “active” or production sense) — and usually not really necessary. In everyday life it is quite acceptable if the leamer has a good approximation of the native speaker's phonetic abil- ity: a pronunciation with a more or less recognizable foreign accent is not to be ashamed of. However, to “know the pronunciation” of a foreign language means more_than a phonetic knowledge. Let us go on to discover the nonphonetic component of prffifcia}jort18 Chapter 1 THE NONPHONETIC COMPONENT Lexical knowledge in pronunciation L Imagine that a learner pronounces gone as */gany instead of the correct /gon’. This is certainly a mistake — but not a phonetic one! After all, a word /gan/ does exist in English (gun), so gan’ is phonetically well-formed: no phonetic feature of the language is violated by saying it, The trouble is that /gan/ is not the pronunciation of gone: the learner has confused two words (two lexical items). He did not make this mistake because he was unable to articulate correctly, since from a phonetic point of view /gan/ is correctly articulated. Nor did he replace a difficult sound by an easy one, since /a/ is not easier than /n/. Our learner simply does not know which vowel is contained in the word gone; this is, then, a lexical mistake. A similar example is provided by the word wilderness /wildenas/, which many earners mispronounce as */'waildanay/, Is it easier to say /wail-/ than /wil-/? Certainly not This mistake is, again, not of a phonetic but of a lexical type. The learner assumes (correctly) that wilderness is derived from wild /watld/, and also assumes (incorrectly, in this case) that the derived word has the same vowel as the base word. Please note that from a purely phonetic point of view both /wildanas/ and */waildanas/ are well-formed; the problem is simply that the second form does not exist, The learner should have learnt the promuneiation of wilderness as a separate lexical item. His phonetic knowledge will not help him here: he has to possess lexical knowledge, i.e. he has to leam which sounds occur in which words, especially where the spelling is misleading, 110 Lexical knowledge is a matter of storing unconnected bits of information in our memory. This is needed in speaking any language, because sounds and meanings are arbitrarily connected. You just have to know that dim is “homélyos” and grim is “zord” and not the other way round. A learner of Hungarian has to know whether “chimney” is kemény or kémény. Now, in most cases our lexical knowledge (our memory) is backed up and reinforced by the spelling: it is helpful to think of the written form of the word, or look at it in a text or dictionary, and we immediately know whether our word is dim or grim, kemény or kémény. The problem in English is that the spelling often gives no clue as to what should be pronounced. The written form gone does not help us to choose between o/ and /a/. (Actually, it suggests /s/ on the analogy of done and one, which are dan wari.) Similarly, the identical letter of wild-wilderness also hides the difference in sound. If someone confuses dim with grim, or kemény with kémény, people do not regard this as a mistake in pronunciation, because the differences are shown in the spelling too. But if someone confuses gone with gun, ot wild with wild(-erness), or lead /li:d/ “vezet” with lead eCChapter 1 19 ed/ “Slom”, we speak of a pronuni words is not directly derivable from their written form, Let us stress that from a phonetic point of view this whole distinction is meaningless, because phonetically gone and gun, lead (verb) and Jead (noun) are just as different as, say, dim and grim, lock and luck, or meet and met. tion mistake, because the sound-composition of these Knowledge of rules 111 Regularities of Spelling (Letter-to-Sound Rules) — English spelling is not entirely irregular: usually is quite regular, though the rules may be complicated, These regularities should be learnt (and taught!) like any other regularity in any language. For example, if you are uncertain whether hall is /howl/ or /ho-l/, you must remember the rule that the letter a is never pronounced /ot/ — so halll can only be /ho:. The sound Jou! is found when the spelling has 0, od, ow, ow, eg. hole, goal, soul, bow! — but never in words where the spelling of the vowel is (or begins with) a, e.g. hall, warm, law, Paul. These latter all have />:/. In deciding which word has /ou/ and which has /2:/, the spelling, then, is a reliable guide, even if not as directly as in Hungarian or Italian or Finnish. If you do not know this, itis because you never cared to learn it (or because your teacher never cared to tell you), and not because English is phonetically difficult. Sometimes we have very simple general rules: English j is always /d3/; sh is always 1M}; ¢ followed by a, 0, w is always /k/ (cat, cot, cu), ete. Sometimes we have only “negative” rules, e.g. that a is never foul; w is never /v/; g is never sounded in final ng (=/y/) ete Admittedly, there are unpredictable exceptions to most of these rules, but the existence of exceptions does not invalidate any rule in any language. ‘Thus we conclude that the lexical knowledge-component of pronunciation includes the knowledge of letter-to-sound rules. 1.12 Morpheme alternations. — We shall now examine yet another nonphonetic aspect of pronunciation. Imagine that someone pronounces the act as */82 ‘ekt/, instead of the correct /Oi “wk. The mistake is not in articulation, and not even in lexical knowledge. The word the can certainly be pronounced /85/ — but not in this environment. Our leaner does not know the rule prescribing that the becomes /Si/ before a vowel. This rule is really a grammatical rule because the conditions for it (“in what environment does it happen?”) can be given clearly: it happens before vowels. The change from /da/ to /di/ is predictable. The learner is thus making a grammatical mistake, of the same type as if he said *a act instead of anact. Or take someone who knows the word insane /in'sein/ and thinks that the noun derived from it, insanity, is */m'semati/. The correct pronunciation, however, is /in'seenatil. ‘The leamer is carrying over the vowel /ex/ from the base word to the derived word, much as20 Chapter 1 he did in the wild-wilderness example; yet the problem here is different because in wilderness the change from /as/ to /A/ was unpredictable (and therefore had to be learned lexically as a property of this particular word), while in insanity it is predictable: the suffix -ity always makes the preceding vowel short. Many other words follow this pattern, ¢.g. grave fev — gravity lel, divine lau! — divinity I. Again, these pronunciation mistakes do not have their basis in phonetics, but come from an insufficient knowledge of the systematic rules (broadly speaking, the grammar) of the language. 113 The “grammatical” component of pronunciation also includes the correct forms of suffixes in different environments. For example, the past tense suffix is always spelt ed, but is pronounced /-d/, /-U of /-1d/ depending on the environment — namely, the last sound of the verb to which the suffix is attached. The suffix is /-d/ in played /pleid/, but /-t! in kissed /kisW. Such automatic change from one form to another is called alternation, and the forms themselves alternants. We have just seen that the article the has the alternants /89 ~ di/, the stem insan- has a longer and a shorter altemnant /sn'sein ~ in’saen-/, and that the suffix -ed has the three altermants /d ~t ~ 1d The collective name for such small but meaningful grammatical elements as suffixes, function-words, or stems, is morpheme. We have just seen some examples of morpheme alternation. In other languages this is considered a part of the grammar, but in English it frequently presents itself as a pronunciation problem because the spelling does not always distinguish the alternants from one another. 114 Sound alternations. — Not only morphemes can alternate in regular ways, but sounds as well. One classical example of sound alteration in English is the weakening reduction”) of vowels in unstressed syllables, Take the word rebel for example. As a noun, ithas the stress on the first syllable, and thus the ¢ of the second syllable is weakened to /af or disappears completely: a rébel rebal/ or /rebl/. But when this word is a verb, it has the stress on the last syllable, and now it is the first vowel that is weakened to /3/ or a very short /il, 10 rebél /ra'bel/ or /n’bel/. In other cases the stress moves away because of the addition of a suffix, as in horizon /ha'razn/ but horizéntal /,hora'zontl/. Here, too, the change of vowel quality from full to weak (or vice versa) is a consequence of the shifting of stress from one syllable to another. Another regular sound altemation is Pre-R Breaking, the change of quality of most Jong vowels before r. Compare, for example, Judy 'dzu-di/ with jury /dzoori/, or been /bicn! with beer /bia(rV/, where the difference in vowel sound is an automatic consequence of the following r.Chapter 1 2 Rules for suprasegmentals 1.15 The correct pronunciation of suprasegmental features, too, may depend on gtammati- cal factors. We saw in 1.5 that each sentence has its main stress, which usually falls on the last word. However, when the last word is a preposition, the main stress (shown here with ") has to fall on one of the preceding words, since a preposition is normally unable to take stress on itself: Jim is the guy who spoke SPRENCH. Jim is the guy we NsPoKe about. In certain cases, when a preposition happens to have the same sound shape as some other word (e.g. fo and two), the correct placement of the main stress may distinguish one sentence from another: Jim would like Ntwo. /...'laik 'tu:/ Jim would Nuke to. /..‘laik tu/ In LS we said that the learner must know how to pronounce weak forms (e.g. /dz/ for does, or ‘a/ for are). But he also has to learn when to use the weak form. This depends on the en- vironment of the word (its position among the surrounding words). In the following sentences the word does has different stressing and articulation according to its environment: ‘Does your brother KNOW? daz! stressed, strong Ibe'lieve Neveryone docs. fdazi unstressed, strong, "What does it NMEAN? ‘daz! unstressed, weak ‘This is another aspect of pronunciation knowledge derived from grammatical knowledge. 116 To sum up: someone who knows how to pronounce English has the following know- ledge at his disposal: A) PHONETIC KNOWLEDGE 1. Production a: Segmental elements — Absolute articulation (so # H sz6) — Relative (positional) difficulties (sing + H ing) b: Suprasegmental elements — Stress and rhythm, = Intonation IL. Perception (of all elements above) B) NONPHONETIC KNOWLEDGE 1. Lexical-type knowledge sound composition of lexical items (gone, wilderness) ~ spelling irregularities and traditionalisms (lead v. + lead n.) TL Grammar-type (systematic) knowledge ~ spelling (letter-to-sound) regularities (hall # hole) ~ morpheme alternations (the + Cons. # the + Vow.) — sound alternations (réhel #rebél; been # beer) ~ stress and intonation as prescribed by grammar22 Chapter 1 THE RELATIONSHIP OF PHONETICS AND PRONUNCIATION 1.17 It should now be clear that phoneties is not the same as pronunciation, On the one hand, knowing the pronunciation of English means more than just knowing its phonetics; Pronunciation includes nonphonetic knowledge. One the other hand, the science of phonetics deals with many things (the anatomy of speech organs, acoustics, instrumental measurements, speech therapy, etc.) that are by no means necessary for a good pronunciation of any foreign language. In everyday life people often use the term “phonetics” loosely, to describe pronun- ciation and things connected with it. A book like the present volume is likely to be referred to by students (and teachers) as “the phonetics textbook”; a language teacher may say to class at school: “children, let’s do a bit of phonetics”. Strictly speaking, this use is incorrect — but once you bear this in mind, you may as well go on using it, just like people speak of “sunrise” and “sunset”, though we have known since Copemicus that the sun does not really “tise” or “set” at all The phonetics of English (in its strict scientific sense) shows that English, like all other languages, has some peculiar sounds that are difficult, but on the whole it is not something exotic or unusual, It is certainly difficult for a Hungarian to articulate swelfih correctly, but it is equally difficult for an English speaker to pronounce words like H svOnyori or German Herbsipflanze “autumnal plant” We shall not really go into phonetics in this course. We will only use it as back+ ground, as far as we need accurate phonetic descriptions of those elements — both segmental and suprasegmental — that are difficult for Hungarians, 8 And yet, it is widely held that English pronunciation is very difficult: more difficult than Hungarian or German or Spanish pronunciation. This is true, but the unusually difficult nature of English pronunciation is not due to its phonetics (which is like that of any language) but to the unreliability of the spelling, Written English often confuses the leamer and suggests the wrong pronunciation. This is far less frequent in other languages, where you can more safely rely on the spelling when you want to pronounce something. When a Hungarian leamer pronounces debt (correctly /det/) as */debU/, this has nothing to do with phonetics: he is simply deceived by the spelling (just like with gone or wilderness). It is often said that words like debt have an “irregular pronunciation”. This statement is true only if by “pronunciation” we mean the relationship of spelling to sounds. Actually, it would be more precise to say the opposite: the word /det/ — which is, in itself, a perfectly easy and regular phonetic form — has an irregular spelling, with a superfluous silent letter b initChapter 1 23, Morpheme identity vs. morpheme alternation 1.19 In Hungarian, morpheme alternants are usually indicated in spelling. For example, if the root vowel is shortened before a suffix, this is shown in writing: nydir ~ nyaral, hid ~ hidak. In English there is a similar shortening, but it is not shown: insane ~ insanity, wild ~ wilderness. To take another example, in Hungarian the past tense suffix -f becomes -it after a vowel, and the spelling teflects this: reszelt ~ kohogott. In English the past tense suflix -ed becomes /t/ after a voiceless consonant, e.g. Kissed st, but the spelling does not reflect this: it has the same -ed in all cases. (Exceptions are verbs with irregular vowel-shortening, e.g. slept, lost.) The spelling of English is, by and large, insensitive to morpheme-alternation. This fact makes English difficult to “pronounce” (not to articulate!), because you have to remember the alterations and provide them from your memory. But it has its advantages as well: it makes English easier to “scan” (to read silently and understand the meaning of the text), and easier to spell. English spelling is grammatically more logical, more abstract, than Hungarian. Whatever the pronunciation of the past tense suffix, it is spelt -ed, which is quite logical since itis the same suffix. Whatever change may happen to the stem wild during word formation processes, it is still spelt wild. Thus English spelling emphasizes morpheme identity and ignores morpheme alternation. The opposite is true for Hungarian, where morpheme alternation is emphasized at the cost of morpheme identity. For example, the H imperative suffix -j has the alternants -s, which are all explicitly shown in spelling: ij, tssz, néze, bémts (and not, as would be logical by English standards, inj, *iszj, *nézj, *banyj). This makes Hugarian “pronunciation” easy, for you just have to look at the word and say what is written; but the scanning and the orthography become more difficult, as you have to learn that these different -sz, 2, -» endings are really the alternants of the same morpheme -j 1.20 Pronunciation may be defined as consisting of those elements of knowledge that do not appear in writing, or cannot be directly inferred from the written form of the language. It will be interesting to draw the borderline between pronunciation knowledge and grammatical knowledge. Traditionally, grammar is the knowledge of writing and of things written (the word grammar derives from the Greek gramma, which means “writing”. It is commonly agreed that grammatical mistakes are those that show up in writing — or would show up in writing if the speaker were to write down what he is saying. For example, to say */e "ekt/ is called a grammatical mistake, because if we wrote it down, it would appear as a mistake in writing too: *a act. On the other hand, to say */89 ‘kt is not, called a grammatical mistake, for when written down it would look faultless: the act. This is why */0a 'wkt/is regarded as a mistake “in pronunciation only”. The borderline between grammar and pronunciation thus depends on what phenomena of the language are indicated in its writing and what are not, Consequently, the “amount of pronunciation” in cach language will depend on how detailed its spelling is or to what extent24 Chapter 1 it follows (or ignores) the alterations of the language. If the spelling is “sensitive Hungarian, the language has “much grammar” and “little pronunciation”, If the spelling is “insensitive” to alternations, as in English, there will seem to be “little grammar” and “much pronunciation”. If a leamer of Hungarian says “hisej instead of sissz, this counts as a grammatical mistake; if a leamer of English says */kisd/ for kissed (correctly /Kist/), which is exactly the same type of error, people will consider it a pronunciation mistake. Because English spelling is “insensitive”, many alternations remain unindicated in writing — but remember; the rules are still rules, whether they are reflected in spelling or not. Teaching phonetic and nonphonetic knowledge 1.21 When teaching and learning English pronunciation, we have to distinguish the two types of pronunciation knowledge: phonetic and nonphonetic. They must be approached and evaluated differently. Phonetic “knowledge” is not really knowledge but a skill. It is not so much a question of understanding what ought to be done, as of being physically able to perform the required articulatory movements. It is similar to learning to play a musical instrument: you may well understand what you ought to play, yet your fingers need a lot of practice before your performance sounds right. Here demonstration, repetition and practice matter more than logical understanding. Individual performances will vary tremendously: each of us has his or her limit — a “ceiling”, as it were — beyond which we cannot really improve our articulation. A lot depends on talent, less on diligence. Some people can never get rid of their foreign accent, no matter how hard they try. It is not worthwile to press leamers beyond their limits. If somebody — after a good deal of demonstration and practice — is still unable to pronounce, say, the English sh-sounds, he should not be pressed further. If his speech is otherwise correct and fluent, he will be understood even if he says sick instead of thick. Nonphonetic knowledge is quite different. This is a question of understanding and memorizing facts, rules, and their interconnections, and has nothing to do with talent. No earner must be forgiven for pronouncing figure as */'fidza/, because anyone can learn the rule that g is always /g/ when followed by u. If somebody pronounces kissed as */kuzd/, this is not because his articulatory abilities are limited, but because he was not diligent enough to eam the rules — or he was badly taught. In short: nonphonetic promunciation knowledge is like the other aspects of language knowledge (grammar, vocabulary, or style): it can be mastered by anybody through devoted learning and good teaching. 1.22. Teachers should be careful not to equate good pronunciation with a pleasant English- sounding articulation. It is certainly desirable that learners should articulate almost like native speakers do, but often these same leamers make serious mistakes in the lexical-type or grammar-type components of pronunciation, and these mistakes may be more dangerous thana==S=rr""“"_-—-—-,-—-~—<=—S—sts—s—OSC C aS\VaSWV\vCOo OE Eero Chapter 1 25 an “ugly” foreign-sounding articulation, Which learner speaks English better: Alajos, who pronounces wilderness with a pleasant English articulation as */waildanas/, or Borbala, who pronounces it with a harsh Hungarian accent as *vilddrnesz? Do we prefer Aranka, who pro- ounces various with well-articulated English sounds as */vo'raioz/, or Balézs, who pronounces it *veridsz, using only Hungarian sounds? Certainly, all four of them say the words badly, but Borbéla and Balézs will be more readily understood than Alajos or Aranka. The teacher should try to improve Borbéla’s and Balazs's articulation as far as possible — but they may have reached their “ceiling”; in that case they must be praised for their careful learning and solid knowledge. On the other hand, the teacher should tell Alajos and Aranka that they are saying imaginary words; they should be reproached for carelessly relying on their “intuitions” instead of opening a dictionary, or learning the rules for the suffix -ous, The teacher should not be overimpressed by an easy-flowing articulation: all that glitters is not gold QUESTIONS FOR REVISION 1, What is the definition of pronunciation? What kinds of knowledge does it include? What is the difference between phonetics and pronunciation? Is English phonetics more difficult than that of other languages? If we say “English pronunciation is especially difficult,” what are we referring to? ind H examples. Why do many Hungarians pronounce gone as /gar/? What are morphemic alternations? Give Why do many Hungarians pronounce thick as /sik/? 8. What are the “suprasegmental” elements of pronunciation?CHAPTER 2 SOUND, ALLOPHONE, PHONEME 2.1. Richness of sound variety. — How many sounds are there in English? If we look for a phonetic answer to this question, we will find that there are very many indeed. For example — the Jp! in pig is different from the /p/ in sleeps or sleepy: the first is pronounced with & short [h] sound after it, so it is really [p" 1g], while in sleeps or sleepy it is a plain [p] just like in H pipa. (The first type is called aspirated, the second type unaspirated.) — the vowel /i:/ in heat is much shorter than the same vowel in mean or sea. ~ the /I/in leaf is quite different from the /V/ in feel; namely, in leaf itis like H 1 (e.g, liszt nyi), in the word feel it is pronounced with an [o]-coloured articulation, almost [fiol]. (The first type is called Clear-L, the second type Dark-L.) — the /1/ in train, address — when it follows /t d/ — is fairly different from /n/ when it ‘occurs on its own, as in rain, arrest. In /tr dt! the /1! is more like @ real consonant. We could continue listing such differences, some smaller, some bigger, till we arrived at the conclusion that there are hundreds of different sounds in English! 2.2 Before we go on, let us point out that the situation is no better in other languages: every language has hundreds of different sounds. In Hungarian, the n of ronda is different from the n in rongal (which is /1y/), and it is again different in hangya, which is pronounced hany-gya; and again different in honvéd, which is pronounced like “homvéd”, but with an m- like sound (symbolized as []) different from the [m] in hombeir. The first ¢ of forduljanak cerre {g:r0] is much longer than the the first ¢ of « paprika ere [ere]. And so on. Richness of phonetic nuance is a natural feature of all languages — English is no exception. Distribution 23 This bewildering variety of sounds, however, does not mean that you have to choose between hundreds of possibilities every time you want to pronounce a new word, Things are in fact much simpler, because the sounds of language have some systematic rules — very much like the rules of grammar. For one thing, sounds are not evenly distributed over words or syllables: not all sounds can stand in all positions. For example, English /h’ is very unevenly distributed: it eana a Chapter 2 7 only be pronounced at the beginning of a word or before a stressed vowel, e.g. hdppy, behind, comprehénd. In other positions h cannot be pronounced, e.g. Gréham /ereism/, véhicle ictkl/, annihilate fa!naialewW, Sarah /'seara/ Thus English /h/ has a restricted distribution: it occurs in certain positions but not in others. To take another example: the short vowels /@, €, 1,0, A, 8/ (as in bag, ten, kt, Jot, cup, ut) have an important distributional restriction: they can only occur before a consonant — never before another vowel or at the end of a word. So if you wonder whether the o is pronounced as /o/ ot /owy/ in words like poet, heroic, judo, potato — you can be sure itis /ov/, since a short vowel like /o/ is not allowed in these positions. By the distribution of a sound we mean the sum of those positions (~ environments) in which it can occur, Most sounds have some restriction on their distribution, i.e. there is some position in which they never occur. SOUND AND PHONEME 24 Are all phonetic differences equally important? Do all sounds play the same role in in? The function of sounds in the language system is to identify words, that is, to distinguish one word (or morpheme) from another. Some sounds in English do have this function: for example, fie is not the same word as die, send is not the same as sand, and wash, is not the same as watch. These pairs show that in English the sounds /t/ and /d/, /e? and /e {/ and J) are capable of distinguishing words. Their differences are not purely phonetic, but have a distinetive function in the language. Putting it differently, we may say that the difference between /t/ and (di, ete. is not just a surface difference but an underlying one. Such distinctive (ic. contrastable) sound units, which represent an underlying difference, are called phonemes. The difference between /t) and /d/ is a phonemic or distinctive difference, so /t/ and /d/ are different phonemes. (Pronounce /fowniny, fou'ni:miki.) ‘A phoneme is an underlying sound unit capable of distinguishing one word from another in a given language. It is called underlying (H. “mogéttes”) because one phoneme may have different realizations, that is, the same underlying unit may appear as different sounds on the surface in actual pronunciation. The number of phonemes in a language is normally around 40, much smaller than the number of sounds. communieati